The present invention relates to an apparatus for piling Portland cement packages in alignment, on the loading platform of a truck or the like.
In the distributive stage, two transportation ways of Portland cement are prevailing. One is for stationary consumer plants where bulk cement transportation containers such as tank lorries are employed, while the other for wholesalers, temporary construction sites or comparatively small lot users, scaled cement packages in paper bags are carried by trucks. Portland cement package is arranged, for example, in a sealed paper bag of around 40 kg by an automatic packer at a cement distribution service station. A number of cement packages arranged by the automatic packer are piled one upon another on the loading platform of a truck.
Packages must be aligned both horizontally and vertically on the loading platform, which was formerly done manually by two or three workers. In recent years, in order to save such heavy man power labor, an apparatus is desired which can automatically pile packages of Portland cement efficiently on the loading platforms of trucks, aligning them both horizontally and vertically. Such package piling apparatuses are disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Utility model Patent Disclosure Sho 60-6724 (No. 6724/1985) and Sho 59-116327 (No. 116327/1984), and have been put to practical use.
The former apparatus comprises a swinging belt conveyor with a swinging chute at the head thereof. The belt conveyor is pivoted at the tail end. The motion of the belt conveyor and the chute is to be controlled so as to exactly put each package in predetermined position, it presumably is difficult for the apparatus to move itself quickly corresponding to continual series of packages supplied from an automatic packer, which results in lack of high efficiency. It may be assumed that the apparatus can pile packages of cement totally weighing about 24 tons per hour at the most, which may not meet the usual packing rate of the automatic packer of 36 to 45 tons per hour. Obviously, the piling efficiency of the apparatus falls short of the ability of the automatic packer.
The latter apparatus disclosed has a distribution shelf which can support two packages of Portland cement simultaneously. The shelf can move back and forth, up and down, and left to right and vice versa. In this apparatus, two cement packages at a time are supplied onto the shelf by an intermittently moving feeder belt conveyor. The shelf, now supporting two bags, must be moved from the receiving position to any desired piling position on or above the loading platform of a truck or the like. The apparatus, therefore, needs to have a guide mechanism for guiding the shelf to such a position. Inevitably, the larger the loading platform, the longer is the distance the shelf has to move. The piling efficiency of this apparatus seems to be limited by the complicated motion of the shelf, which means this apparatus also falls short of the ability of the automatic packer.